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Thirty Years' War
The era of the Thirty Years' War lasted from about 1598 AD until 1651 AD. It began with the Edict of Nantes in 1598 AD, which ended the French Wars of Religion. It then ended with the restoration of monarchy in England in 1651 AD, which ended the brief experiment as a republic after the English Civil War. The Protestant Reformation would meet its bloody conclusion in Germany with the devastating Thirty Years War. In the 17th century, European monarchies were diverging in two distinctly different directions; France and Russia towards absolute monarchy, while England would gradually emerge from its civil war with a parliamentary monarchy. Meanwhile, with the decline of Spain, other European nations were quick to dispute their claims to the Americas and the Far East. History Thirty Years’ War in Germany The Protestant Reformation would meet its bloody conclusion in imperial Germany with the devastating Thirty Years' War (1618-48). The war which began as a local conflict in Bohemia, gradually gained an international dimension, with Denmark and Sweden seeking to extend their sphere of influence in the north, and France continuing her rivalry with the House of Habsburg that began under Francis I. The Reformation had complicated and embittered the rivalries between the patchwork quilt of duchies of imperial Germany. For a time, a fragile peace was maintained by the Peace of Augsburg (1555 AD), which allowed the princes to freely choose the official state religion of their realm. Yet political and religious tensions made Germany a powder-keg, with the two sides forming into opposing military alliances, headed by Protestant Mainz and Catholic Bavaria. The dramatic event that sparked the crisis came when, in 1617, Emperor Matthias Habsburg (1612-19) elevated his cousin and heir, Ferdinand, as duke of Bohemia, the region around Prague. Ferdinand was a fervently Catholic ruler of a predominantly Protestant state, and an outsider to the Bohemian nobles. In May 1618, Bohemian nobles quarreled with two Catholic officials appointed by Ferdinand in the statehouse in Prague, with the argument ended when the two officials were forcibly thrown out the window, only to miraculously survive the three story fall to the ground; the Defenestrations of Prague from the Latin for "out the window". This event started the Bohemian revolt. The situation escalated in 1619, when in August the nobles in Prague declared that the Bohemian crown elective and installed a new Protestant duke, an extremely inflammatory act of open defiance to the Emperor and his heir. That same month, Ferdinand II Habsburg (1619-37) was crowned Holy Roman Emperor, determined to avenge his usurpation in the Protestant upstart. The Bohemian problem was resolved swiftly. An imperial army, the bulk from Catholic Bavaria, converged on the duchy, and routed the Protestant duke at the Battle of White Mountain (November 1620). Bohemia was incorporated into the imperial domain, with Roman Catholicism imposed on the population, and Bohemia's electoral rights were transferred to Bavaria. However, this growth in Habsburg power and wealth alarmed the dynasty's foreign enemies. Protestant Denmark was the first to intervene, eager to keep Catholics away from the Baltic, and financially backed by Protestant England. In May 1625, the Danes marched into Germany. Alas they were ranged against one of the most experienced generals of the age, Albrecht von Wallenstein (d. 1634), a minor Bohemian noble who became rich as governor of the duchy. The Danes were not only driven back north, but the south of the Jutland peninsula was annexed. Buoyed by the victory, Ferdinand overreached himself and issued the Edict of Restitution (1629), demanding that all Protestant duchies not specifically ceded in the Peace of Augsburg be restored to the Catholic Church. The new Catholic presence on the shores of the Baltic persuaded the king of Protestant Sweden, Gustavus II (1611-32), that he should enter the war. He brought an army across the sea and marched into Germany in 1630, this time financially backed by Catholic France. A pragmatic politician, Cardinal Richelieu secretly allied Catholic France with Protestant Sweden as he saw an opportunity to weaken imperial Germany and the Habsburgs. With the over-ambitious Wallenstein out-of-favour at the time, the emperor confronted Gustavus at the Battle of Breitenfeld (1631). This was the first public display of the new tactics devised by Gustavus that proved devastating. During the early years of his reign, Gustavus II had effected a quiet revolution in the Swedish army: a discipline and flexible citizen army, where other monarchs relied on foreign mercenaries; two and three rank musketeer firing simultaneous salvos; troops wore light-weight armour, and Gustavus himself only leather; field artillery half the weight of any other in the field, mounted on carriages, and still capable of firing a four-pound shot; and prepared cartridge for faster reloading and firing. He has often been called the “''father of modern warfare''”, setting a new order on the battlefield, with fire power and mobility now the priority. At Breitenfeld the two sides were evenly matched, but the Catholic side was routed; their first major defeat of the war. Confronted by this threat, Emperor Ferdinand had little option to reappoint Wallenstein to his post as commander of the imperial army. The two great generals finally faced each other at the Battle of Lützen (November 1632), where the Swedish tactics again won the day. However the Protestant victory cost the life of Gustavus II himself, who died leading a cavalry charge. His death marked the end Sweden's major role in the war. This phase of the war was marked by unprecedented brutality; for example, the siege and sack of the Protestant city of Magdeburg by imperial troops cost the lives of two-thirds of a city of 20,000. By 1635, exhaustion among the German princes at last made a compromise possible, with the emperor making major concessions. If the war had only involved the German states, it might well have ended here. However, France saw opportunity in continuing the war to weaken the Habsburgs, and entered the war directly; this time France would be backed financially by Sweden. The last awful phase of the devastating war rumbled on for several more years with no clear outcome in sight. There were certain significant turning points. On the Catholic side, in 1640 Portugal seized the opportunity to rise up in revolt against rule by Habsburg Spain, diverting her from supporting the emperor and her own war with the Netherlands. On the Protestant side, the international alliance was fractured in 1643 when Denmark and Sweden entered a short period of conflict. The war was finally brought to a close after a 5 year peace conference that ended in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). The main winners from the peace were Sweden and France. Sweden gained valuable Baltic territory from Denmark, and enjoyed a brief period as a European power until the Great Northern War (1700–21). France received territory on her eastern border in Lorraine and Alsace from imperial Germany, and cemented her position as arguably the greatest European power. The independence of the Dutch Republic was finally accepted by Habsburg Spain, allowing her to concentrate on her enormously successful commercial and colonial enterprises. Switzerland, which had long enjoy a large degree of autonomy within imperial Germany, also gained her independence. The main loser of the peace was the Holy Roman Emperor, by now Ferdinand III (1637-57). On the religious issue, the Peace of Augsburg was reconfirmed, allowing princes to choose their official state religion, with the addition of a measure of religious tolerance; citizens professing another form of Christianity now had the right to worship in private or to emigrate. The emperor also no longer claimed to be the ruler of the German principalities, recognizing them as independent states with the right to engage in their own international diplomacy. Their future struggles would be not against the anachronistic Holy Roman Emperor, but among themselves, with Prussia soon emerging as Austria's main rival. The war constituted the worst catastrophe to afflict Germany until World War II. Perhaps 8 million people died, about 25% of her total population, with losses of up to 50% in some regions. The war killed soldiers and civilians directly, others were killed in religious purges, and still more through famine and disease; in the last decade of the war, typhus and dysentery had become endemic in Germany. Yet the conflict also helped to end the age of religious wars prompted by the Protestant Reformation; religious issues retained political importance after 1648, but no longer dominated international alignments. In international terms, the ultimate consequence of the war was to tip the Balance of Power in Europe in the favour of France. Louis XIII and Richelieu in France Henry IV was succeeded by his nine-year-old son Louis XIII (1610-43). Queen Marie de Médicis, Louis' mother, ruled as regent during the early days of his reign, who briefly reversed France's longstanding anti-Habsburg policy, arranging for Louis to marry the daughter of Philip III of Spain; a marriage that would be significant in the War of Spanish Succession. Her regency was extravagant and largely incompetent, until she was eventually exiled in 1617, when Louis was seventeen. Her main contribution to France was introducing to the government her very talented private secretary Armand du Plessis, known to history as Cardinal Richelieu '''(d. 1642). Richelieu was exiled with Louis' mother, but climbed his way back to power, to become by 1624 the dominant figure in the government. Louis XIII remained firmly under the thumb of his ruthless chief minister for the rest of his reign. Richelieu proved an indefatigable servant of the French crown, intent on securing absolute obedience to the monarchy and French supremacy in Europe. France's great domestic challenge was managing the country's continuing religious discord. Many Catholics, including Queen Anne, regarded the Protestant Huguenots as an enemy to be destroyed. Richelieu agreed with them up to a point. He believed that their right under the Edict of Nantes to maintain armed fortresses weakened the king’s position, and seized the major Huguenot citadel of La Rochelle by force in 1627, but otherwise allowed them to continue practicing their religion as long as they stayed loyal. Richelieu dealt firmly with intrigues against Louis and himself, including plots by the king’s younger brother and heir, as well as by Queen Marie. Strong centralised rule was attempted by Francis I, was improved upon by Henry IV, and was now, thanks to Richelieu, successfully achieved by Louis XIII. The French parliament (Estates General) summoned in 1614 by Queen Marie proved to be the last for almost two centuries, until the fateful assembly of 1789. The administration now put in place was run by bureaucrats from the centre, not by nobles dispersed around the country. To have influence one now needed to be at court, under the eye of the king and his minister. Richelieu was famous for his patronage of the arts and learning: as headmaster of the Sorbonne, he renovated and extended the institution; and founded the Académie Française, responsible for matters pertaining to the French language. He also took a great interest in economic matters, encouraging economic self-sufficiency, and granting privileges to companies that established colonies in the Americas, Africa, and the East. To protect trading and colonial interests, he created a navy; by 1642 France had 63 oceangoing vessels. He needed the money for his last purpose, promoting the international dignity of the French king. The threat to France's international stature came, as it had done since the days of Charles V and Francis I, from the joint Habsburg dynasties of Spain and Austria. Richelieu was busy diplomatically in the Thirty Years' War, and France intervened directly from 1635. Neither Richelieu nor Louis XIII lived to see the great advantage to France of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). By the end of reign of Louis' successor, Louis XIV, the nation that everyone else in Europe feared would be no longer Spain or Austria, but France. Richelieu's ideas of a strong nation-state and aggressive foreign policy helped create the modern system of European politics. English Civil War Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, was the last surviving child of Henry VIII, the only adult son of Henry VII. The undisputed next in line to the throne was James VI Stuart of Scotland, great-grandson of Henry VII's eldest daughter Margaret. The English crown and the king of Scotland were in secret correspondence long before Elizabeth's death, and, a skillful politician, James was on his best behavior in the last years of her reign. The succession of '''James I Stuart (1603-25 AD) to the throne of England went as smoothly as if he were Elizabeth's own son, rather than the king of a country with a long history of hostility to England. Thus, by an accident of hereditary, the crowns Scotland and England were formally united into a single kingdom for the first time in history. There was some opposition to the Union of the Crowns on both sides of the border: the Scots feared that the Scotland would become like Ireland, technically its own kingdom, but entirely subject to English whims; and the English feared Scottish nobles pouring into government, as well as seeing the economic benefits flowing one way, to less developed Scotland. Yet James skillfully moderated frictions between his diverse peoples, in a very symbolic way; the Union flag south of the border was St. George's Cross superimposed upon a St. Andrew's Saltire, while the reverse was true north of the border. Nevertheless, when reforming the kingdoms to impose uniformity, it was English ways that were applied to Scotland. The two defining characteristics of Stuart rule in England were evident early in the reign of James I; the relationship with parliament, and continuing religious turmoil. Where his cousin Elizabeth had been a pragmatist when dealing with parliament, James' firmly believed in the divine right of an absolute monarch. The Scottish parliament was superficially similar to the English but had little real power, and there was a powerful contemporary example across the Channel in France. The first English parliament in 1604 was so affronted by the king's attitude that it responded with a document asserting that their powers and privileges were ancient rights, not granted by the grace-and-favour of the monarch. The animosity continued throughout his reign, culminating in the Petition of Right (1628), often considered a successor to Magna Carta (1215): it went further, explicitly denying the right of the monarch to keep a standing army in peacetime, as a backdoor route to martial law; and reasserting yet again that no citizen shall be obliged to pay a tax of any kind unless specifically authorised by an elected parliament. Elizabeth had also been a pragmatist when dealing with England's two separate religious struggles: the demand for tolerance from her Roman Catholic minority; and Puritans who believed that the Reformation was a deed half-done, were fervently anti-Catholicism, and wished to purify the Protestant Church of England. Catholics in England had had high hopes that James, the son of Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, would introduce an act of toleration for Roman Catholics. However, Protestant James was refused to lift any of the restrictions on their worship. So, a group of disaffected Catholics led by Robert Catesby contrived to blow up the king while he was opening parliament in 1605; the Gunpowder Plot (1605). However, the plot was discovered when one of the conspirators felt compelled to warn his brother-in-law not to attend the ceremony. All the conspirators were eventually caught and executed, but the plot became forever associated with Guy Fawkes because he was caught at the scene; a cellar below the House of Lords, tunneled to from an adjacent building. The long-lasting impact of the plot was to deepen the anti-Catholic obsession in the English national psyche for centuries to come. Puritans were no less impressed with James' insistence that the Church would retain bishops and archbishops, a hierarchy through which the monarch hoped to control the Church of England. By the death of James I, the king and parliament were on course for a clash, and his son Charles I Stuart (1625-49) was stubbornly inflexible enough to bring it about. Charles was determined to fix what was now a gaping hole in the royal finances. One of the ways that Elizabeth had courted favour, was by keeping peacetime taxes ridiculously low, considering the Europe-wide inflation spurred by the influx of Spanish silver from the Americas. After his father's reign of uninterrupted peace, the crown's income wasn't even close to the financial needs of the state. However, parliament was equally determined to assert its authority, and took the unprecedented step of granting taxes only on an annual basis, in order to force the king to call regular assemblies. Instead, the parliament called in 1629 was the last for eleven years, and Charles looked for ingenious ways of raising money, including a levy on ports called Ship Money and the granting trade monopolies, such as the one on soap. However by 1539, constant legal objections to such taxes were reducing the money raised, just when the king's need was increasingly urgent. Charles attempted to establish religious uniformity in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, by imposing an Anglican style hierarchy of bishops and archbishops on Presbyterian Scotland. English Puritans despised bishops and archbishops, and their Presbyterian cousins felt much the same way, sparking the Bishops' War (1639-45) north of the border. The new crisis forced Charles to summon parliament in 1640, but far from being willing to help the king against the Scottish Presbyterians, parliament presents Charles with a list of demands: Ship Money was to be outlawed; two of the king’s closest advisors were impeached; and parliaments must be called at least every three years. Charles' position was so weak that he accedes to these demands. Yet this clash with parliament only alarmed the Gaelic Catholic elite in Ireland. At least under Charles there was a degree of religious tolerance. Now faced with the prospect of a militant Puritan parliament, Ireland rebelled; the Irish Confederate Wars (1641-1653). The situation in Ireland dramatically escalated the clash in parliament, which was in the process of presenting the king with a great list of 206 grievances known as the Grand Remonstrance, a detailed criticism of Charles' reign. Given the English prejudice against Catholics in general and the Irish in particular, many moderates in parliament felt that the upheaval was getting out of hand. The Grand Remonstrance divided the parliament as nothing else had, passing in November 1641 by only a narrow majority. However, this glimpse of parliamentary disunity tempted Charles into an impetuous and disastrous response. On 4 January 1642, Charles, accompanied by 400 soldiers, marched on parliament determined to arrest five leading opponents for treason. Forewarned of the king’s intention, none of the five were present, and the Speaker famously asserted parliament's independence with quiet dignity, "May it please Your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here." Six days later, Charles left London, soon joined by many moderate members of parliament, making it even more radical. Both the king and parliament prepared for a war that neither side wanted, but neither side was willing to back-down from; the English Civil War (1642-51). There was strong support for the king in the north and west of England, as well as in Wales and the cathedral cities. Parliamentary strength resided above all in London, but also in the ports and the commercially advanced towns of the southeast. Yet the geographic division of the protagonist was too complex to generalise; the conflict split loyalties, often dividing counties, towns, villages and families. Scotland's somewhat erratic involvement in the civil war is an obvious example; while religious aligned with parliament, it feared being sidelined by an increasingly radical English parliament, as much as a despotic king. The war officially began in August 1942, when Charles I raised his standard in Nottingham, after failed peace talks characterised by preposterous demands and a propaganda war for the hearts and minds of the people. The two side became know as Cavaliers and Roundheads, derogatory named attributed by the opposing side. The stereotypical royalist Cavalier was portrayed as a long-haired mounted nobleman with Papist sympathies. The stereotypical parliamentary Roundhead however was short-haired citizen militia-man and joyless Puritan fanatic. Militarily, the English Civil War was a chaotic mess. England had no standig army at the time and the generation who fought the war had no military experience to speak of; there was no Wallenstein or Gustavus II, at least until Fairfax and Cromwell came to the fore. The first major engagement took place at the Battle of Edgehill (October 1642), as the royalist forces marched on London. Edgehill, an unexpected encounter with neither side scouting properly, could have been a decisive royalist victory that ended the civil war there and then, but for the ineptitude of the commanders. In the end, it were merely a mauling, that slowed the royalist advance and allowed parliament to regroup and successfully defend London. Nevertheless, the early course of the war ran very much in the kings favour. Royalists firmly controlled the north, and soon seized firm control of the west too, taking the parliamentary stronghold of Bristol in July 1643. Yet the next major engagement at the First Battle of Newbury (September 1643) was again inconclusive. Less than a week after Newbury, parliament formed an alliance with Scotland. The Scots crossed the border into England with some 20,000 men in January 1644, and laid siege to York, with support from parliamentary forces under Lord Fairfax. When the royalists tried to lift the siege, their armies were devastated at the Battle of Marston Moor (July 1644), and York was lost. Despite the first major victory of the war, the parliament forces failed to capitalise on the moment: they almost captured Charles I himself near Banbury, but blundered the chance away; an ill-advised campaign in the royalist stronghold of Cornwall ended in defeat at the Battle of Lostwithiel (September 1644); and the Second Battle of Newbury (October 1644) ended inconclusively, despite a parliamentary army almost twice as large. This string of blunders convinced parliament of the need for the wholesale reorganisation of it's army. The New Model Army '''had three main aspects: full-time soldiers, rather than part-time militias; it was given first call on all available resources; and it was put in the hands of experienced and competent officers. Thomas Fairfax was chosen to command England's first truly professional army, an adept and talented commander who proved well up to the job of molding the Parliamentary army into a skilled and disciplined fighting force. Yet he was destined to ultimately be overshadowed by his second-in-command, '''Oliver Cromwell (d. 1658). Cromwell was a minor noble, a passionate Puritan, and a minor but outspoken member of parliament. In the war, he proved himself an eminently capable cavalry commander, fighting at Edgehill and playing a decisive role at Marston Moor. Charles I decided to draw this newly formed parliamentary army into a confrontation, and in May 1645 sacked the Parliamentary city of Leicester. However, the loot from the city, prompted much of his army to take their spoils and go home. Despite now being outnumbered, Charles decided to meet Fairfax at the Battle of Naseby (June 1645), and it would prove his undoing. At Naseby, cavalry and discipline proved decisive. The king's cousin Prince Rupert routed the left flank and Cromwell routed the right, but while Rupert pursued his foe into the distance, Cromwell called a disciplined halt and charged the centre; the parliamentary army all but destroyed the royalist force. The battle effectively ended the first phase of the civil war. Royalist strongholds fell one by one with Fairfax offering generous terms: Bristol in September 1645, and the royalist capital in Oxford in April 1646. Charles himself escaped the city in disguise and surrendered to a Scottish army at Newark. He hoped to make an alliance with Scotland, but proved so intransigent to their demands that, after months of negotiation, the Scots essentially sold him to the English parliament in return for the repayment of their war debts. Almost everyone now expected that the king would be restored to the throne, after a negotiated settlement. Oliver Cromwell was in a unique position as both a member of parliament and a general, thus well placed to be the intermediary in a growing dispute between the army and parliament. Members of parliament had been prevented from serving in the New Model Army to ensure the professionalism of the army, but an exception had been made for Cromwell whose military skill was well known. The discussions between the army and parliament, known as the Putney Debates (October 1647), were mainly on the negotiating position with the king, but also touched on some extremely radical topics such as whether the king should be restored at all, and even universal suffrage, a topic that would not be revisited for 150 years during the French Revolution. However, the situation escalated in November 1647, when Charles escaped imprisonment in Hampton Court troubled by these increasingly radical debates, for the Isle of Wight. There, he stoked the fears of the Scots that they would be sidelined by an increasingly radical Puritan parliament. Their invasion of England on his behalf in early 1648 sparked the second phase of the civil war, with royalist uprisings in many parts of the kingdom and some unpaid parliamentary soldiers switching to the king's side. Parliament was no more popular at the time than Charles I: taxes were arbitrary and high, and their treatment of dissidents was despotic. A crucial factor in the war was the king's alliance with the Scots. Ever stubborn, Charles' offer was far from generous and Scotland moved south with a mere 10,000 men. In a campaign where everything went wrong for the royalist cause, Fairfax and Cromwell suppressed the unrest in the New Model Army, and delivered a crushing defeat to the Scots at the Battle of Preston (August 1648). With the news of Preston, the royalist cause evaporated with it. Charles's action in triggering the renewal of civil war, hardened attitudes in the army and divided parliament. After a period of indecision, Cromwell finally approved a dramatic coup d'état; Pride's Purge, named for the commander of the operation, Colonel Thomas Pride. On 6 December 1648, three regiments of the New Model Army surrounded parliament, and denied admission to some 200 moderate members. The much reduced Rump Parliament then undertook the trial of the king for treason for waging war against parliament. Charles I refused to recognise the court, not without some justification. Parliament generally had 450 members, which had been purged of royalists by the civil war. More than half of this purged parliament had been itself purged by Pride's Purge. On 27 January 1649, the king was found guilty by 67 commissioners, although only 59 agreed to sign the death warrant, including Oliver Cromwell. Three days later, King Charles I met his death with great dignity on a hastily erected scaffold in the yard of the Palace of Whitehall, where he was beheading with one clean stroke. On the very day of the execution, parliament declared England to be a Republic; the Commonwealth of England (1649-53). In the coming weeks, both the House of Lords and the monarchy were formally abolished, and parliament elected a strong executive arm of the government, with Cromwell as the chairman; he was given the title Lord Protector in 1653, or to his critics “''king in all but name''”. In August 1649, Cromwell was finally able to turn his attention to the situation in Ireland. Cromwell in Ireland The Protestant Plantation of Ulster that had followed the revolt of O’Neill and O’Donnell between 1594 and 1603, caused alarm for the Catholic elite in Ireland; by 1640, 70% of all land was still in the hands of the Gaelic-Irish and Norman-Irish. At least under Charles I there was a degree of religious tolerance, but as the clash between the king and parliament escalated the alarm grew. Faced with the prospect of a militant Puritan English parliament, Ireland rebelled. The uprising in October 1641 was poorly planned and betrayed by informants, and failed to seize Dublin, centre of English control in Ireland. With this failure, the rebellion descended into anarchy. In Ulster, the Protestant population was settled on the best land with lower rents, but were far from the majority and the Catholic population seized the opportunity to settle old scores. Some four-thousand Ulster Protestants were killed in sectarian massacres, with many thousands more were expelled from their homes. In one notorious incident, more than one-hundred Protestant inhabitants of Portadown were taken captive and then herded off a bridge into the icy cold waters of the River Bann to died. The killings of 1641 had a powerful psychological impact on the Protestant settlers, and ensured that when the English government response came it would be savage. News pamphlets of the day took what was undoubtedly a serious rebellion with genuine abuse of the Protestant population and turned into an alleged armageddon. Protestant reprisals and Catholic counter-reprisals continued until the summer of 1642, when the Catholic elite reasserted control. For the next seven years, more than two-thirds of the country was in the bands of the rebels as the Confederate Ireland (1642-52), outside the Protestant controlled Cork, Dublin, Carrickfergus and Derry. In the English Civil War, Confederate Ireland allied with the royalists, allowing Charles I to withdraw English troops from Ireland to fight against parliament. Oliver Cromwell and the New Model Army arrived in Ireland in August 1649, landing in Dublin, which had remained loyal to Parliament. Cromwell's clear policy was to terrorise the population into submission. The first town to fall was fortified town of Drogheda, garrisoned by royalist troops and Irish Confederates. With a plentiful supply of artillery, after a week-long siege, Cromwell's forces breached the walls protecting the city. When the garrison still refused to surrender, Cromwell issued his infamous directive to kill everyone still under arms. During the successful assault on the city, almost the entire garrison, as well as any Catholic priests found were put to death; about 2800 people. The carnage of Drogheda, was repeated a month later at Wexford. With these examples in mind, several towns surrendered without resistance, but others held out. Kilkenny, the capital of Confederate Ireland fell under siege in March. In April 1650, Cromwell laid siege to Clonmel, one of the last major centres of resistance. Although he wound-up taking the city after a three week siege, it came at a significant cost, with the New Model Army drawn into a clever trap that killed a thousand men in one hour. After Clonmel, Cromwell himself was called back to England, entrusting the campaign to his son-in-law Henry Ireton. It would take a further two years before the whole of Ireland was back under control, after a savage scorched-earth campaign that brought famine and plague to the country. By 1653, a new phase of plantation began that would change Ireland irrevocably. Almost all Catholic held land outside of the barren province of Connaught in the west was confiscated; in Irish popular memory, they must "go to Hell or to Connacht", although whether this famous phrase was ever uttered is questionable. In 1640, about 70% of the land in Ireland was in the hands of the Catholic Irish. By the end of the 1650s, the figure was only about 15%. Across the country a new Protestant ruling class was being installed; the so-called Protestant Ascendency (1650-1829). The Restoration would complicate matters in Ireland yet again. Charles II redressed some of the injustice done to Irish Catholics, with the Act of Explanation (1665) restoring a third of the Cromwellian land-seizures, although it mainly benefited the Norman Irish. Catholic hopes were raised even higher under his successor, James II, only to be dashed again in 1688 by the Glorious Revolution in Ireland. Oliver Cromwell has become a particular figure of hatred in Irish history, and whether his reputation is deserved remains much debated; there are certainly strong traces of guilt and self-justification in Cromwell's own letters on the campaign. Commonwealth and Restoration in England Cromwell was recalled from Ireland in May 1650, in order to deal with the arrival in Scotland of the eldest son of the executed king, Charles II. Charles II had spent the civil war in the Netherlands, appealing for continental support, but finding none in the wake of the Thirty Years' War. In June 1650, he landed in Scotland having made another alliance with the Scots. Cromwell was determine to nip this latest phase of the civil war in the bud, and in July 1650 invaded Scotland. The campaign in Scotland proved difficult, with the Scots harassing the English supply-lines and soon leaving Cromwell bogged down near Dunbar. If the Scots had just waited, the New Model Army would probably have been forced to withdraw from Scotland, but they decided to do battle. The Battle of Dunbar (September 1650) was probably Cromwell's finest hour, routing a Scottish army almost twice as large, and soon took Edinburgh. Yet the Scots regrouped, and in July 1651, Charles II made the ill-advised decision to invade England with his Scottish army; this was almost certainly a trap laid by Cromwell. Charles hoped to find royalist support in England, but with the nation war-weary was sorely disappointed. Now he was the one in enemy territory with his supply-lines harassed by English cavalry. Cromwell finally caught-up with them and decisively defeated Charles and the Scottish army at the Battle of Worcester (September 1651). Charles II himself managed to escape to the continent, after famously hiding in an oak tree at Boscobel. Worcester mercifully brought the English Civil War to an end. By the end of 1651, Oliver Cromwell was back in London and able to finally play a full role in parliament again. He was not best pleased with what he saw there: factional infighting, self-interest and little progress on political or religious reforms. There was also a marked reluctance to stand for re-election, with the Rump Parliament having by now sat for over a decade. There was possibly some political justification in this, as the chaos sown by free elections during the French Revolution would show. However, the New Model Army was increasingly dissatisfied with parliament over various issues, and Cromwell eventually sided with the army. In April 1653, Cromwell forcibly devolved the Rump Parliament with the use of the army, ending his famous speech: “''You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!” When the members protested, Cromwell called in a battalion of armed troops to clear the chamber. In its place, a 140 man provisional assembly was hand-picked by the Cromwell and the army, with Cromwell as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth for life, ruling in conjunction with an an executive council of state; this was undoubtedly a military coup. The dissolution of the Rump Parliament ultimately proved the undoing of England's experiment with Republican government, for Cromwell found it no easier to divest himself of power to a legitimate government, than the Rump had. During the next five years, there were a series of constitutional experiments that attempted a peaceful transfer of power, without delivering England to the defeated royalists or to victorious and intolerant Puritans. Yet, after the bitterly divisive civil war with profound enmity between factions, a viable constitution proved impossible. In the aftermath of royalist insurrections in various parts of the country in 1655, the country was divided into eleven districts, each commanded by a major general; unmistakably military government. In 1657, a powerful faction in the assembly came to an astonishing conclusion; the Humble Petition suggested that Cromwell himself should become king. After some deliberation he chose to refuse, but accepted the right now to select his own successor. Remarkably, regicide England was not treated as a pariah by the monarchies of Europe, and in fact Cromwell agreed an alliance with France in her hostility with Spain. This is in sharp contrast to almost all other revolutions, where opportunistic foreign enemies would invariably try to take advantage of the situation; obvious examples are the French Revolution and Russian Revolution. In the end, the English Republic could only be held together by Cromwell himself, with his blend of pragmatism and integrity, and the intense devotion of the troops. On his death in September 1658, he was succeeded by his eldest son Richard. Richard Cromwell was affable and well-liked, but had no political or military experience, and proved ill-equipped for the role of Lord Protector. All the old hostilities between parliament and the New Model Army were quickly unleashed of England. In April 1659, the army surrounded parliament and forcibly dissolved it; essentially another military coup. In an unsavoury deal, Richard Cromwell was then forced to resign his position and the Rump Parliament was recalled to power, having been dismissed 1653. Yet the army and the Rump found it no easier to appease factional hostility. Discontent with the Commonwealth of England was now at an all-time high. In January 1660, George Monck, a close colleague of Oliver Cromwell throughout the civil war and then commander of the English forces in Scotland, decided to intervene. He formed an alliance with old retired Thomas Fairfax, and crossed the border with his army and slowly marched on London, incorporating detachments of the New Model Army on his way. Reaching London in early February, Monck's stated intention was to restore the power and authority of a free parliament. To this end, he reinstated by force all the members of parliament who had been excluded in Pride's Purge of 1648, thus reconstituting the last undeniably legitimate English parliament. The one and only action of this parliament was to dissolve itself, and call for free and open elections; the first in England in two decades. Prior to first meeting of this new parliament, Charles II issued the Declaration of Breda (April 1660), promising a general pardon for crimes committed during the English Civil War, and the payment of pay arrears to members of the army, as well as voluntarily accepting restrictions on his powers subject to parliament, if he were restored to the throne. A month later, the new parliament proclaimed Charles II Stuart (1660-1685) king of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. As promised, he pardoned all offences committed since 1637, exception with the agreement of parliament for one. The 58 men who had signed the death warrant on Charles I were to be hunted down and executed. 24 had already died, and most fled the country into exile, but 13 were executed. The corpse of Oliver Cromwell himself was exhumed from Westminster Abbey and hanged-drawn-and-quartered. His head was stuck on a pole on top of the Houses of Parliament, where it remained for twenty-five years. Russian Expansion Boris Godunov (1585-1605), who succeeded Ivan the Terrible, first as regent and then as Tsar in his own right, remained well in control of Russia despite his lack of legitimacy, until the appearance of the first so-called '''False Dmitry' in 1604. Poland felt inclined to interfere in Russian affairs, coaching a defrocked Russian monk to pretend to be the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible and the rightful heir to the throne; the real Dmitry had in fact been exiled and died during an epileptic seizure in 1591. The pretender acquired growing support among the disaffected nobles and Cossacks, peasants who had escaped from serfdom to a nomadic life. The False Dmitry failed to convince the nobles in Moscow, but with the death of Boris Godunov in 1605 and assassination of his son two months later, Russia descended into chaos. The first supposed Dmitry was assassinated in May 1606, but the rebels produced a second Dmitry and when he was killed, a third; a scene reminiscent to the reign of Henry VII Tudor of England. The anarchy became known as the "Time of Troubles", and soon Russia's neighbours hoped to turn it to their advantage. One rebel faction invited a Polish army into Russia in 1610, and another faction invited a Swedish army. The growing crisis at last persuaded the Russian nobles to agree on a candidate for the throne. Michael Romanov, the seventeen year old great nephew of Ivan's first wife Anastasia, was brought out of hiding in a monastery, and crowned Tsar Michael I Romanov (1613-45); the Romanov dynasty would rule Russia until the Russian Revolution. The reigns of Michael and his son Alexis (1645-76) were notable chiefly for the restoration of stability, peace and prosperity, and for the expansion of Russian territory. In the west, the Ukraine was seized from Poland including Kiev. But the major expansion was in the East, where the whole of Siberia was occupied with astonishing speed. The Tsars enlisted the Cossacks for the task; fighting had become their profession, and would remain so even when they were granted land. The pattern was for Cossack bands to press into new regions of Siberia, as yet occupied only by tribes of hunters, then establish fortified settlements, and demand tribute for Moscow from the local people. Often tribute was in furs, which became a major part of Russia's trade with Europe. At the start of the Romanov era, there were Russian outposts as far as the Yenisei river, 1750 miles east of Moscow. By 1649, the Pacific coast had been reach, an advance of another 1750 miles. From the start, the Russian authorities found a secondary use for Siberia, as a place of enforced exile in appalling conditions. Some of the first to suffer this very Russian punishment were victims of Russia's own mini Reformation during the 17th century; the Schism of the Old Believers. The Russian Reformation aimed to correct Church practices wherever they had deviated over the centuries from the Byzantine Orthodox example. In our secular age, the errors seem trivial; crossing oneself with two fingers rather than three, or icons which show the holy figures in an incorrect manner. The third Romanov tsar, Peter the Great, would bring Russia to even greater heights, transforming the country into a great European power. Habsburg Spain in Decline The reign of Philip II (1556-98), who sent the Spanish Armada against England proved the zenith of Spanish power. The uniting of the thrones of Spain and Portugal in 1580, brought together Europe’s two great overseas empires. The Castilian nobles’ led a quite comfortable existence, but disdained commerce and industry, allowing foreign merchants to dominate trade. Money that didn’t find its way into foreign pockets, or wasn’t owed for European wars, went towards building churches, monasteries, and palaces. 17th-century Spain was like a gigantic artisans’ workshop. The age was immortalised: on canvas by artists such as Velázquez, El Greco, Zurbarán and Murillo; in words by Miguel de Cervantes the author of Western Europe's first great novel, Don Quixote; and the prolific playwrights Lope de Vega and Calderón. The reigns of Philip III (1598-1621) and his son Philip IV (1621-65) marked the steady decline in Spain's prestige and prosperity, compounded by chronic inflation prompted by the influx of silver from the Americas, and her costly involvement in the Thirty Years' War to no great benefit. Both kings handed over affairs of state to self-serving favourites. Portugal was lost to the crown for good in 1640, in an almost bloodless revolution sweeps. Meanwhile, the Spanish monarchy was creating a problem for their royal line through the constant intermarrying within the House of Habsburg, becoming dangerously inbred. Three successive generations of Spanish kings had Habsburgs as both parents; Philip III, Philip IV and Charles II. The famous Habsburg jaw, prominent in Philip IV, was so extreme in Charles II (1665-1700) that it amounted to a disability; one of many, for he was sickly from birth. During the reign of Charles II, Spain was essentially left leaderless and was gradually being reduced to a second-rank power. He married twice but had no children, and was assumed to be impotent. In his thirties he was so often ill, that his early death was widely expected, with the coming crisis obsessing Europe throughout the 1690s. The Habsburg dynasty became extinct in Spain with Charles II's death in 1700, and the War of the Spanish Succession ensued in which the other European powers tried to assume control of the Spanish monarchy. European Rivals in the Far East With the decline of Spain and the union of the Iberian Crowns (1580–1640), the Portuguese monopoly on the long trade route round Africa to the Far East was vulnerable to other European powers. The Treaty of Tordesillas, which the Spanish and Portuguese claimed divided the world between them, proved of little consequence; no other European nation had agreed to it. It was the Dutch really broke that power and briefly became the world’s foremost naval and commercial nation. The Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602, with a tax-free monopoly on eastern trade for 21 years and extensive powers to deprive Portugal of her spice trade. in 1619, Batavia in Java was established as the capital of the Dutch Empire. The Portuguese were driven out of Malacca by 1641 and from Sri Lanka by 1658. The main focus of Dutch attention was Indonesia, known as the Spice Islands, the source of the most valuable spice of all, cloves, coveted as a flavour in food, as a preservative, as a mild anaesthetic, as an ingredient in perfume, even to mask stinking breath. They established control over the trade in cloves and also nutmeg with ruthless efficiency, eradicating clove trees on all the islands except two and taking strict measures to ensure that plants were not exported. The Cape of Good Hope became a very important port of call for taking on water and fresh supplies, and in 1652 began to establish a successful settlement there. The Dutch also took on and oust from the Spice Islands, another European nation attempting to get a foothold in the region; the English East India Company. The English had been the first to adopt this approach in 1600, but their Dutch competitor was initially by far the more successful. However, in depriving the English of the Spice Islands, the Dutch unwittingly did them a favour, with the English East India Company deciding to concentrate its efforts on India. In fact the English and Dutch as often cooperated, such as in the destruction of Portuguese Hormuz on the Persian Gulf in 1622. The English had established a factory in Surat in eastern India by 1613; a factory was a secure warehouse for the accumulation of Indian textiles, spices and indigo. Surat remained the English headquarters on the west coast of India, until gradually eclipsed by Bombay in the 1690s; Bombay was acquired by Charles II in 1661 as part of the dowry of his Portuguese bride. Meanwhile the English were establishing secure footholds on the east coast, with Fort St George at Madras constructed between 1640 and 1644. By 1668, the French joined the English in India with a number of settlements including Pondicherry and Chandernagore. France probably could have become the leading European colonial power in the 17th and 18th centuries. It had the largest population and wealth, the best army and for a time the strongest navy under Louis XIV. Yet with an intense preoccupation with European affairs, France pursued a spasmodic overseas policy. England, France’s ultimately successful rival, freed somewhat of such European entanglements by the English Channel pursued her overseas policy with a single-minded intensity; limiting her involvement in a string of European conflicts from the Nine Years' War to the War of Spanish Succession, from the War of Austrian Succession to Seven Years’ War, while using these conflicts as pretext to disencumber her rivals of their overseas colonies. European Rivals in the Americas The spectacular conquests of the Spanish in the Americas, first in the Caribbean and then Mexico and Peru, captured the imagination and the envy of the European world. Throughout the 16th centuries, With the decline of Spanish power, In early 17th century, the Spanish were joined in North America by the British, French, and Dutch. In 1607, James I sponsored the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, but only after the most appalling difficulties. A year after its founding, disease, hunger, and attacks by local Indians had reduced the one-hundred settlers to less than forty. More settlers reached Jamestown in 1609 only for a devastating winter of famine to reduce the five-hundred settlers to sixty. Yet the settlers persevered. Meanwhile, the most famous boatload of immigrants in North American history left Plymouth in September 1620. The Pilgrim Fathers were part of a Puritan group who want religious freedom in a place of their own; their example of self-reliance became a central strand in the American ideal. They settled Plymouth in New England. Although only half the group survived that first winter, in November 1621 after the first harvest the Pilgrims and the local Indians shared in the first annual Thanksgiving celebration, with a large indigenous fowl, the turkey, making an admirable centrepiece. The success of the Plymouth settlers soon caused others to follow their example. Massachusetts was settled in 1630, and its appeal proved so great that by 1640 some 20,000 settlers arrive from England; by 1650 the English colonies had a population of 50,000. As the population grew and colonization extended further afield, regions evolved into separate colonies; Connecticut emerged in 1662, and New Hampshire in 1679. For all the drive of religious freedom, the North American colonies inherited the self-righteous religious intolerance of Europe; Rhode Island emerged in 1636 as a haven that welcomed persecuted sects. Meanwhile, New York was settled by Dutch settlers in 1624, after the island of Manhattan was purchases from the local Indian chiefs. Although New York thrived, the Dutch found it easier to make money by piracy, and when an English fleet arrived in 1664, the Dutch surrendered the territory without a shot being fired; the recent Dutch settlement of New Jersey was also appropriated. Meanwhile further north, the French founded Quebec in 1608 and Montreal in 1648. Their main focus was not colonisation but fur-trapping, especially beaver, which was done through alliances with Indian tribes. Thus New France quickly covered an immense area but the population only grew slowly; by 1660 when the English colonies were reaching 75,000, there were about 2,300 Frenchmen in North America. In the West Indies, the first English settlement on the many islands of the western Atlantic was the result of an accident. Castaways from an English vessel wrecked en route for Virginia in 1609, found safety on Bermuda. They also established settlements in St Kitts (1623), Barbados (1627) Antigua, Nevis and Montserrat (1636), and Bahamas (by 1648), the site of Columbus' first landfall in the New World but since then mostly deserted. Hard on their heels, the French occupied part of St Kitts (1627), Dominica (1632), and Martinique and Guadeloupe (1635). Meanwhile in South America, the Spanish and Portuguese proved far more hostile to other European colonies, and the French and Dutch were restricted to the region of Guiana; Dutch Suriname (1616), and French Guiana (1643). There they survived as small-scale slave-based sugar plantation colonies.Category:Historical Periods